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Around Town: Topekans win another national pool title

Amateur crown is 4th for capital city in 8 years

From left: Patrick Cady, Matt Dressman, Kent Henderson, Leon Sylvester and Charlie Snow teamed up to win the TAP 8-ball national championship in Charleston, S.C. last month. It was the fourth Topeka amateur 8-ball team to win a national title.

Charlie Snow and his teammates Patrick Cady, Kent Henderson, Matt Dressman and Leon Sylvester won the TAP 8-ball team title last month in Charleston, S.C. It was the fourth such amateur title for a Topeka pool team.

Topeka is well known for many things, including the Kansas Capitol, Brown v. Board of Education, the Kansas Expocentre, the Combat Air Museum, Washburn University and Heartland Park Topeka.

Oh, and then there’s amateur pool.

The capital city brought home another amateur 8-ball national team championship last month, its fourth overall, with all of them happening in an eight-year span (2004, 2006, 2010, 2012).

It’s believed to be the most amateur team 8-ball national titles by one city in either the United States and Canada.

This time it was Terry’s All Stars at the Pool’s Amateur Tour (TAP) national tournament in Charleston, S.C.

Based out of Terry’s Billiard Club, 3919 S.W. 21st, the five-man team, comprised of Patrick Cady, Matt Dressman, Kent Henderson, Leon Sylvester and Charlie Snow, also had three individuals that were unable to attend — Brian Ramirez, Tony Jackson and Marcus Alonzo.

“(Topeka) just has a really competitive atmosphere,” Snow said. “At Terry’s Billiards, we just have a lot of people who have played the game for a long time. We have some legends here that are willing to teach players. It really helps our skill level increase.”

Terry’s All Stars beat out 84 teams from the U.S. and Canada by winning eight matches in four days, including six in the 64-team bracket, to take home the $10,000 grand prize.

“We’re professional amateurs,” Sylvester said. “Topeka definitely has some of the best amateurs around.”

The team will be honored for its accomplishment with a proclamation by the Topeka City Council on Dec. 18 at its weekly meeting.

“All five of us are really good friends,” Henderson said. “We hang out all the time. We’d put our players up against anybody else.”

The previous three team titles came at the American Poolplayers Association nationals, and this was the first TAP crown.

While there have been four Topeka teams win it all, many of the guys on the teams have been different each time.

For the Topekans that had won a title before — Snow, Sylvester and Henderson — the experience was different because there were no alternates this time around in the 5-on-5 tournament. While teams can take up to eight and rotate in and out, this group had only five.

“Other teams could swap out players,” said Snow. “We didn’t have that luxury. If one guy wasn’t shooting well, we were just kind of screwed. We picked each other up if one guy lost.”

“There was no arguing over who was going to play,” Sylvester said. “No drama. Everyone was playing. That helped a lot with team chemistry.”

How a match worked was each individual from one five-man team played another from the other team in a competition that was based on handicap. And the first five-man team to get three individual victories was the winner. Terry’s All Stars won every match 3-0 or 3-1, including winning the championship 3-1.

“When you have so many competitive players in one town, it just seems that everyone wants to get to a better level,” Snow said. “People accumulate a passion for the game.”